Cannon Beach

Andy and I went to Cannon Beach yesterday! Hooray for being outside and getting some relative sun! We headed out about 2:00 (we wanted to be there for the sunset, but have time to walk around/eat/etc.), and arrived at the beach around 4:00. Not too bad! And the drive was very pretty. It reminded me in spots of New England, only bigger.

It was a lovely day spent strolling along the beach, marveling at the iciness of the Pacific (which Andy has never seen before), and admiring the giant rocks sticking up out of the sand. I’ve never seen anything quite like it before, and it was very cool. I was very glad that Andy brought his camera. While we were down by the giant rock, some nice ladies asked if we could take their picture–which of course we did–and then in exchange they took a picture of us together! YAY! Rare footage of the two of us in the same picture! ^_^ Then we poked around the tide pools and looked at nifty little fishies and crabs and such things.

We strolled along for an hour and a half or so, until past five when most of the shops closed. Then we headed back up to the town of Cannon Beach and strolled around looking for a place to grab a relatively inexpensive dinner. After examining the display menus of a few pricey places, we settled on The Local Grill and Scoop. It’s a very cute little place, and the prices were pretty reasonable. Andy had the clam chowder (which he said was excellent), and I had a BLT (a little small, but we were going to have desert anyway, so it wasn’t a problem). Then we ordered a Black and White sundae for desert. It was huuuuuge! O_O Needless to say, we couldn’t finish it, but the waitress said that was common.

It was only about six-thirty then, so we headed back to the beach (which was getting significantly colder, air-wise) and walked along down the other direction toward the other rocks. The tide was out pretty far, so the seagulls were having a blast picking crabs and other assorted sea critters to death for dinner. We also saw jellyfish, which we carefully avoided stepping on.

I think the ice cream went to our heads, because we were being particularly silly, but that was exceptionally fun. Did think I almost died when I stepped into a fast-flowing outflow and felt the sand quickly start to sink beneath me. Needless to say, I jumped right back out again! ^_^ I did manage to knock Andy’s glasses off at one point by accident, but luckily they landed in the sand not six feet away and were fine. Lol.

By the time we got to the other rocks, the sun was getting lower. The moon was coming up, too. We waited down there until the sun really went down and Andy snapped off some amazing shots. Then we started to head back to shore, only to find that we were on something of a sand bar, and the tide was already coming in pretty strong. Uh-oh! Another couple was out there with us, watching the sunset, so we all joined forces to wade through the knee-deep, freezing water to get back to shore. For a moment there, I really thought we might have to swim!

By the time the sun went down, it was very chilly, so we headed back. It’s amazing how beaches always truncate distances. We had to walk for probably about half an hour or more just to get back to where we’d gotten onto the sand.

Then we drove home, and got to see all of Portland lit up at night, with a full moon too! It was absolutely breathtaking. (Didn’t take any pictures of that. Andy’s camera was in the back seat. Sorry. ;_;) We were beat when we got back, so we just washed off our feet and went to bed.

But here are lots of pictures! (They’re not in order, but I haven’t figured out how to stop WordPress from being stupid about galleries yet):